Schrödinger's Bandcamp

Obits are already being written for the beloved platform.

Illustration by David J. Weissberg

If 2022 was coined the Year of the Employee, fueled by the great resignation and the race to reimagine work following the pandemic, 2023 will likely be remembered as the Year of the Union, with headline-making battles between workers and bosses across the entertainment and automotive industries.

While collective bargaining seems suddenly relevant in a way it hasn’t in years, even scoring some major wins for workers, it’s worth noting that both the Hollywood and Automotive unions have histories that date back to the heyday of organized labor when the landmark National Labor Relations Act of 1935 was enacted. Since then, transportation and motion picture professionals continue to maintain some of the highest unionization rates in the country, just under 20%.

The same cannot be said for the tech industry, which has some of the lowest at 1.3%. This is one of several reasons why 2023 could also be called the Year of Tech Layoffs. It’s a fact that the music biz was reminded of this week with the announcement that Bandcamp laid off about 50% of its workforce following the sale of the company by Epic Games to Songtradr.

This, of course, set off a deluge of handwringing by artists, labels and fans who have come to rely on Bandcamp as an essential part of the independent music economy — many of whom are now convinced that the “enshitifiation” of Bandcamp is now terminal.

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There’s also the added wrinkle that Bandcamp was one of the few tech platforms with an active unionization effort, and a large portion of those laid-off were union-eligible, meaning that they would have been a part of whatever contract was being negotiated between the recently formed Bandcamp United and previous owners Epic Games before the sale to Songtradr.

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Unsurprisingly, Songtradr hasn’t had anything to say in the 24 hours since the layoffs were confirmed. The platform’s last Tweet was from Oct. 5, when it acknowledged it received demands from Bandcamp United that all workers be retained following the sale while Songtradr continued the good faith negotiations already underway with previous management. This was clearly not what Songtradr had in mind, and its now evident that the fledgling Bandcamp union has been killed off by the new VC-backed overlords.

So, if a strongly worded letter by a newly-formed union that represented less than 100 people and had yet to finalize its first contract couldn’t save those jobs, what hope is there for Bandcamp’s future? That answer is — a lot. But only if the folks bemoaning the situation online are actually willing to do something about it.

Bandcamp (and all platforms) are effectively middlemen for transactions between suppliers and consumers. In Bandcamp’s case, the two-sided market comprises artists/labels/etc. on one side and fans on the other. If Bandcamp employees cannot defend themselves against an assault, might those benefitting from the platform be willing to step up?

A recurring complaint in recent months has been the lack of a musician’s union, ala WGA or SAG-AFTRA. But there doesn’t need to be a formal union to take collective action — especially when those expressing outrage are not just the employees but also customers and clients of a business.

In 2017, over 50,000 websites went dark for a day to protest proposed FCC rules that could compromise net neutrality and supposedly threaten the way business is conducted across the Internet. If name-brand multinationals (Amazon, Google, AT&T), headline-grabbing non-profits (ACLU, MoveOn) and adult sites we’ve never heard of (Redtube and xHamster) could all come together and shut down a sizable chunk of the world wide web for a day, then what is stopping a coalition of Bandcamp buyers and sellers, who presumably have a lot more in common, do something similar. Think of it as Bandcamp Friday, in reverse.

Of course, many will say that the artists who rely on Bandcamp are the ones least able to sacrifice a day’s revenue. There is the possibility that many struggling artists and label owners might not actually be that sympathetic to the newly unemployed tech pros whose average salary was over six figures. But if the threat to the long-term viability of Bandcamp is as imminent as some seem to think, then a day’s revenue might just be the cost of continuing to do business.

We’re not economists here at The Cadence, but Songtradr’s buying of Bandcamp doesn’t seem like a leveraged buyout where the parent company can make more money by killing the baby. It’s safe to assume that Songtradr needs Bandcamp to continue to turn a profit. But sometimes, it takes the users to force tech execs to do the smart thing.

It’s up to all parties with a shared interest in Bandcamp’s thriving to keep it on a mutually beneficial path. In that regard, we’re not advocating for one side against the other. Everyone who interacts with Bandcamp — from management and labor to buyers and sellers — can influence the fate of a great company that took 15 years to build but could collapse much more quickly. It would be a shame to see it die.

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TAKEAWAYS

Salient statements from this week’s music news.

1. Sick of It All Sue Mobb Deep and Supreme for Trademark Infringement

The suit claims that the new capsule collection between the Queens, NYC rappers and streetwear giant copies the dragon logo used by the Queens, NYC rockers since the mid-1980s.

Takeaway: Both Mobb Deep and Sick of It All hail from Queens, New York. In a 2011 interview with the now-defunct blog for the streetwear company Mishka NYC, Prodigy said he first saw the dragon as a teenager, on the wall of a tattoo parlor on Long Island.

2. YouTube Is Developing an AI Tool to Help Creators Sound Like Famous Musicians

Deployment of the licensed beta program is stalled as artists and labels struggle to figure out how to embrace the new tech without signing their own death warrents.

Takeaway: Some music executives worry they’ve given up some of their leverage in these initial deals, given that they want to be seen as proponents of progress and not as holding up innovation. Label executives are especially conscious of projecting that image now, having shortsightedly resisted the shift from CDs to downloads two decades ago, which allowed Apple to unbundle the album and sent the music business into years of decline.

Photo by Ludomił Sawicki on Unsplash

3. Travis Scott’s ‘Sold Out’ Tour Still Has Vast Amounts of Tickets Available

From the Astroworld tragedy to some sort of aborted calamity in Egypt, Travis Scott and Live Nation can’t seem to stop hurting each other.

Takeaway: ‘Sold out’* through our verified fan resale program means “we’ve sold the tickets to resellers who will pass the jacked up prices on to you!” — i.e., not exactly the vibe most concert goers want to experience during the ticket buying process.